Search Summary Plugin

This functionality would be really handy to have as a standard Foswiki plugin until such time as the core functionality is upgraded to support a more user-friendly (google-like) search - perhaps kino search once it's complete.

Unfortunately, I get lots of complaints about Foswiki search in my organization. It's great for embedding searches and formatted searches in topics, but the interface presented to users via the Search box and Search left-bar links is just too complicated. Way too many choices. They just want to search the whole site like they are doing a google search. If there are going to be lots of options, they should be hidden as advanced options.

I wanted to use kino search for our site, but was turned off by its "unofficial" status at this point, and the fact that configure would no longer find new extensions after I installed it (a known issue that's being worked on I think), and by the fact it has so many special dependencies including C language dependencies. In general, I'd say the install is a lot more complicated than your typical Contrib or Plugin.

Anyway, I think there are some major changes to Search planned for Foswiki 2.0 and I'm hoping this will be addressed then. In the meantime, I'm looking for ways to improve what's there now with minimal effort. Regarding this plugin-in, I'll try installing the TWiki version and update this page letting you know what I find.